Chapter 12 — Moving Mountains.
I ignored everyone who offered suggestions. Sorry.
Yesterday, I asked for some suggestions on what to call my first Publication on Medium. I was considering naming it Moving Mountains but I wasn’t all that sure. So I asked for some help.
Today, I went ahead and called it Moving Mountains anyway. Sorry to everyone I pestered for the last few days. The harassment wasn’t even that necessary in the end.
But what does it mean Elliot? I hear you all ask, Is it something really meaningful that you’ve put a lot of thought in to?
Y’all know me so well. It is meaningful and I did put a lot of thought in to it.
To weave the tale of just how much the phrase Moving Mountains actually means to me now, I need to step back about a decade. It might be more than a decade, it’s probably less. But let’s just assume it’s around about 10 years.
Part 1
Well, 10 years ago I was writing poems. I can’t remember many of them but I wrote a few. One was called My Sister Needs Me and it was adorable.
Obviously, at the time, I was enjoying the rhyming process. So I read poems and stories that rhymed. It was about now that I came across Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go!
This might be my lame side coming out again, but I freaking love that book. Some would present glorious novels written by renowned authors as their favourite books. Me? I present Oh, The Places You’ll Go!
If you don’t know the book then it’s about a character (‘you’) leaving town to succeed on his own and, spurred on by the thoughts of the places he’ll see and go, aims to be pro-active about what he wants to do in life.
Nothing else has shaped my life quite like the words in this book (excluding people of course).
And there’s one verse in there, a decade or so on, that has stuck with me.
And will you succeed? Yes! You will indeed! (98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed). KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!
It’s the penultimate verse of the whole book, so I guess it’s supposed to be memorable. But I’ve yet to meet anyone who has been even slightly inspired by any part of Oh, The Places You’ll Go! Everyone should read and be inspired by this book.
It’s kept me inspired for 10 years. That’s insane.
Part 2
As a few of you reading will know, this year has been the most stressful time of my entire life so far. Starting September, I piled too much pressure on myself and near enough crumbled under it (internally at least).
A couple months after Christmas, I realised I had to change something.
So I began to learn how to meditate, chilled myself out and started using Spotify to find music that kept my mind focused and on track. While making the most of my Spotify, I came across this playlist:
This playlist has literally — and I mean literally — helped me navigate the last few months of university and client work in a relatively smooth fashion.
I love a lot of songs on that playlist, but there’s one (Moving Mountains by Skylar Grey) that stands out more than any. Check out the lyrics here.
If Jen was to write a song about me this past year, this would be it. I’ve been consumed by getting to the top as fast as possible and doing the best I possibly can. Except it came at the expense of my mental health.
Which sounds weird, doesn’t it? Mental health is one of those things I don’t think we care about enough. It’s not visible, so we can easily forget about how important it actually is.
I once had my friend Mark say to me, while we were stood in a coffee shop waxing lyrical about meditation, that he doesn’t understand why mental wellbeing is so often ignored. He said:
If you hurt your knee, you put a plaster over it to help it heal. So, when we go through tough times mentally, why don’t we do something to help our minds recover?
For myself and Mark, meditation was how we helped ourselves recover mentally after a tough time in both of our lives. His was quite a bit more traumatic than mine, but during the conversation we understood how both of our issues affected us mentally. And we understood that meditation was the perfect medicine.
So, when I heard Moving Mountains for the first time, I knew that it was my song. Skylar Grey obviously didn’t write it for me (or maybe she did?) but when you connect so deeply with a song, you capture it. The song is mine, sorry Skylar.
Perfection
Which brings me full circle to the here and now, sat in my chair writing this Chapter. For some reason I doubted my idea for a Publication name yesterday. I asked for everyone else’s help. Now, I’m not sure why I did that.
Moving Mountains is goddamn perfect.
See you all tomorrow.
That went on for a bit longer that I expected. I was meant to be at the gym right now but started writing and then the emotions kicked in and the words kept on coming. I don’t actually think I’ve ever created a piece of writing this pure in terms of emotional meaning. It’s lengthy, but I hope you enjoyed it.
Remember, you can always hit me up on Twitter (@EllMorrow) if you have any thoughts on my daily Chapters.
